Watch Me Fall
by shrillshellshine
Summary: Spencer's never needed anyone, until she met Alison; or, the five times Spencer Hastings tries leaning on someone else and all the times she realizes it's pointless (but she still can't stop); set during season 3B, Spencer-centric


_A/N: This is basically Spencer-angst. Spencer-angst, focusing on relationships like Spencer/Alison, Spencer/the girls, Spencer/Wren, Spencer/Melissa, Spencer/Toby...you get the drill. But yeah, like I said, Spencer-angst, in the most basic of forms, set somewhere during season 3, because insane!Spencer is the angstiest Spencer yet._

* * *

Spencer's never needed anyone.

She starts this life off thinking that, and for the most part, she's right.

She's born a Hastings; high expectations, ambition and words of encouragement and congratulations replace any form of an _I love you_, any form of outwardly affection and the pride she knows parents should wear for their kids over the smallest of things. Hands on her shoulder, a light punch against her arm – she's not sure she knew what a hug was before she turned four.

Five years old, sporting pigtails and large glasses that wobble off the end of her nose – she watches blankly as her mother smiles at her, mouth twitching, eyes distant; her father laughs heartily with her, but he can't mask the disappointment that she came in second at that running marathon five weeks after her birthday. Melissa glares at her because her parents get Spencer a new doll, which _Melissa _broke, but then she smiles and tells her it's fine, right, they're fine, after all, they're sisters, right, and nothing can change that.

(she sneaks into her room one night and tears this doll's head off, and when Spencer blames her, her parents just shrug and promise to buy a new one, as if her heart can be bought with money)

It's the first time she learns that she doesn't need anyone, she _can't _need anyone. It's her first lesson into this big bad world and the disadvantages of hope and love (but she still doesn't learn anything).

She forgets all about that lesson when Kendra Santoni pulls on her hair and scratches at her arms and taunts her: _four-eyes, four-eyes, four-eyes, you're nothing but a huge dork with four eyes_; and then one day Melissa sees it, sees the red angry mark across her neck, and Spencer doesn't think she's ever seen her sister as mad as the time she corners Kendra and threatens her. Not during any fight they've ever had, and not even when her parents finally turned their coldness onto Melissa for a change, because _she _came in fourth place at that spelling bee.

And Spencer lets herself believe, lets herself hope.

Seven years old, two months before her birthday – she and Melissa have a huge argument about something she can't remember, and her parents side with _Melissa_, because that's what they always do – they always give Melissa everything and they always love her best, and Spencer's English teacher might say that parents love all their children equally, but even then, Spencer can acknowledge the lie behind that statement – even when she's seven, she's smarter than the rest of her class – knows her ABCs better than they can ever hope to, knows how to count until one hundred fifty and a little after that – but she's never going to be as smart and great and perfect as Melissa, and she realizes this.

So, she goes, red eyes and runny nose, indignant fear and rejection, and she runs away, and in the darkness of that theater, she lets herself a small smile, because she's finally showing them.

(what, she doesn't know – she just knows that they don't even notice she's gone)

And so she learned, from the tender age of seven (but she knew before, she just didn't realize that she knew) that leaning on people is futile because they'll only ever let you down.

She doesn't need anybody.

At seven, she wears this truth like a broken doll to her chest, tiny fingers clutching onto it, hating it, pulsing with the urge to ruin it even further.

At thirteen, she thinks _I don't need any of them_ proudly, and watches them all crave some form of human connection (friends), and she can't help but feel superior to all of them and their hopeful dreams of a happy ending, because she _knows _better; knows a lot more about pain and rejection than they can ever hope to.

(six years later, and she's still the smartest person in her class, in the whole school)

But then it all changes – _we live next door to each other, don't we? I can't believe we've never talked before _– and Alison brings her down; clutches to her hand, digs her nails in her skin and pulls her down to the uneven road of reality and neediness, and opens up a new door to her, a new world of possibilities that she'd previously been blind to.

And she lets herself fall victim to that same dream that they all have, and she finally finds people she can care about, people that care about her – _friends_, something she's never had before – and she's happy, filled with joy and euphoria and the excitement of sleepovers and giggling over cute boys and painting their nails and everything else that seems trivial and small but means the world to her because she can finally share it with someone else.

Spencer's never needed anyone, until she met Alison DiLaurentis and became her friend, and then she met Aria and Emily and Hanna, and she's never loved anyone as much as she loves them.

And it's a slip that she lets herself make, a hole she lets herself get sucked into.

.

But then Ali disappears, and Spencer said what she said and did what she did – and Ali fired back, cruel and harsh and Queen Bee attitude, wrapped up all in one fight – and—

_Ali's gone_.

It takes a while for her to realize the truth of it, to come to grips with it. Hanna and Emily and Aria all seem to understand it, to grasp it a lot easier than she does, because they've always had people to rely on, people they need, and they know what it's like to lose some of those people – but Spencer doesn't, not until she loses Alison, the first person she's ever needed, the first person she's ever let herself need.

And like a child sheltered for too long by her parents from the dangers of the world, she realizes what pain and fear actually mean, running deep through her veins like vines wrapped around her bony arms and legs, choking her heart of any comfort.

_She's gone. I've looked everywhere for her._

_I think I heard her scream. _

And she tries not to need anybody after that – and manages to, for a while, until A starts and it all goes to hell. She tries to _be _needed, not to need, because she knows that her friends and her parents can deal a lot easier without her than she deal without them, and she can't let them know, she can't possibly let anyone know that.

So much for all those lessons. So much for the being the smartest person in the world.

(because, at the end of the day, she needs them all too much)

**i. _Melissa_**

Ali's been missing for three weeks when it finally dawns on Spencer that she's really gone, and that they can't do anything about it. Hanna's doubtful reassurances that this is Ali, she always does this kind of thing, she'll be back in no time; Aria's tiny hand, always reaching out to hold onto someone, to squeeze and comfort them as much as to anchor herself; Emily's quiet, resigned looks and the way her eyes always shine with tears when she sees them – all of this doesn't change a thing about it.

And it hits Spencer harder than she'd like, like that hockey stick hit her ankle and made her fall during a game one time, when a girl tackled her; and she breaks down in the middle of her living room one morning, when she's supposed to be studying – lets the sobs rack through her body and the harsh ring of Ali's words, of her ownwords echo through her mind.

Then Melissa walks in and like a naïve child, she reaches out for her – reaches out for that one shred of hope, for that one reassurance and dream of a happy ending where Ali will come back, alive and well and not hating her anymore.

Melissa looks startled when she first sees her, then disapproving and Spencer – she doesn't even care anymore, because her body is shaking so hard, and Melissa's her _sister_, for god's sake, she's supposed to be here for her, to protect her, and to have her back like that time with Kendra, she—

Melissa holds her, strokes her back with her hand, and she whispers something about how it's going to be okay, and Spencer's so devastated she can't even bring herself to acknowledge the mechanical way Melissa speaks, the way her body feels too tense against hers.

It's the second time in her life – third, if you count the time she told Melissa to change the channel because the horror movie that was on was scaring her and Melissa, miraculously, did – that she's letting herself lean on Melissa, and maybe she's too much of a child to realize that Melissa never meant to walk in on her, never meant to help her in the first place.

After all, they're both Hastings' and being anything less than perfect and composed is a crime only few can commit and few can hope to come back from without expecting any repercussions and disapproving gazes, trained on the back of their heads like shackles for the rest of their lives.

.

She realizes, two years later, sitting in the vacant, bleak room of Radley (a _mental _institute, and she wants to laugh, because how much more imperfect than that could you get by a Hastings' standards?) that needing Melissa is the biggest mistake that she could make, and a hope that was so far from the realm of possibility, that she's angry with herself for being so stupid.

But now she knows better than to need her _family_. She knows better than to ever hope that maybe her parents' priorities will ever shift and not run on the desperate need to be perfect, to appear perfect, to convince themselves of their perfection and their impeccable lives – she knows better than to ever think that Melissa will ever look at her like she's not a lesser human being, a monster, an effigy that deserves to be murdered and humiliated just because of one stupid mistake she made (and continues making).

.

(stuck in a psych ward at the mere age of seventeen – ten years since she ran away and her parents didn't realize she was gone, a year since she told _him_ about it, the _only_ one she's ever told about it—

—she realizes and recognizes that hope is pointless and needing people is weak, and if they ever need you, then you need to show them how irrational they're being, because you can only ever get hurt by people and you can only ever hurt them in return)

**ii. _Wren_**

He kisses her on the night of their date, and she lets him.

She lets him because his lips are warm and soft and even though – or maybe because – they're not _his_, she wants to feel them against her own.

The wind picks up around them, crisp and cold, and she hears leaves rustling somewhere in the space around them; she pulls him in and kisses him back. Runs her hands along his cheeks, feeling the warmth of his skin, the softness that greets her fingertips. Pulls his body against hers, radiating so much heat she's afraid he's the spark that she needs for her to catch alight and ruin everything and everyone around her.

And somewhere in between their kisses, lips and tongues, her teeth biting onto his lower lip, trapping it between hers, the little grin she wears when he gasps at the action, he pulls back, and breathes out, "_Spencer_," and looks at her in a way that he's looked at her before, in a way that makes her muscles clench and her heart stop, pick up with relentless excitement and adrenaline.

He looks at her like he _wants _her, like just the mere thought of distance and space between them could physically kill him. Like they're both playing this game of trying to realize which one of them needs the other more – whether it's her and her brokenness, this snare of insanity and helplessness that she knows she's caught in, that she knows everyone else knows about; or whether it's him and his _love _for her, the love she knows he carries in his heart like a tragic confession he's trying to piece out, a confession that he's been piecing out since the first time they kissed.

Like it's a game

_you've been off your A-game lately_

a sick, twisted dance they're trying to learn, around each other, towards each other.

And she knows she's the one who's going to win, ultimately, that he's going to lose and he's going to fall and break like the fragile doll that he is, that they all are, with their hopes and their dreams and their happy-endings. That she holds his heart – his life – in her hands, and she can ruin him just as easily as Toby ruined her.

Because maybe she's mentally and emotionally fucked-up right now, maybe she's really going insane and losing it – he knows it and still refuses to look at her in any other way that says less than what she wants to see, wants to feel – that he _needs _her, that he loves her – maybe she's all of those things, but she's already fallen. She's already broken and she's already fucked-up, and she has nothing to lose anymore, not like he does, like not her friends do.

He's going to lose, because all she can do right now is hurt him. She doesn't want _him_ and his help, his heart and his hopes – she wants the way he makes her feel, the way his lips crash against hers and the way she can make his breath catch with so little as a kiss. The way she knows his skin burns and flushes when she touches him.

He makes her feel needed – he doesn't look at like she's crazy, this broken doll of insanity and failed dreams and eternal misery fleshed out in a living body. He looks at her like he's always looked at her, and that's what she needs.

That's what she wants. The power and the control and the thrill of the game, of this new conquest. She needs to know that she's still strong and she's still got the blood of what was once Spencer Hastings running through her veins.

"I should go," she whispers pulling away and turning to walk back home.

But it's not for his benefit and it's not to spare his feelings any longer.

She's just not sure she can keep the smile off her face long enough to continue kissing him.

.

But then she's dumped into Radley like nothing but trash, and he stops looking at her like that. He starts looking at her like she's going to break, just like everybody else does, and he's lost all meaning to her, just like Toby and Alison and Melissa did long ago.

.

(all this time, she can convince herself that the last person she needs is Toby, because he's just like Melissa and her parents and the rest of the them.

They know she's gone, but they don't bother looking for her, and just like that, she's seven again, clutching onto that tuna sandwich and watching the nondescript movie play out in front of her eyes, alone)

**iii. _her friends_**

They try. In whatever way they can, in whatever way they've convinced themselves that will work.

Emily tries in more ways than one – she tries firmness, then understanding and sympathy, then space, then that same firmness, then empty apologies and regretful looks

(and somewhere there, Spencer can see the guilt lurking behind her eyes, the guilt she knows she's been carrying around since Nate, since Maya died, and Spencer would feel bad that she's causing her friend even more pain, but she can't bring herself to care)

—and all along, she's being that understanding, perfect friend that Spencer needs her to be. She's actually _trying_, a lot more than Hanna and Aria, and Spencer would feel comforted and flattered if she didn't know that was just who Emily is, the most naïve of them all, reaching out furthest for that one grain of hope to lose yourself in.

Aria tries through understanding in a way, too – she tries in a way that actually makes Spencer raise her head and consider going back to them, her friends, _because they need her_. They need her and Aria knows – they all know, but Hanna and Emily are both too proud to be needed – that that's what will bring her back to them.

_You don't deserve them. You can't be who they want you to be. So stop fooling yourself._

Hanna's approach is blunter, as it should be, because anything else and it wouldn't be Hanna. She fixes her sharp gaze onto her, speaks about getting over it and letting them help her; tells her that she's not insane and it's this _place _that's making her insane – and all along, her voice sounds like acid, _too _much like acid, like she's hoping it'll seep in through Spencer's flesh and into the wounds around her heart, and heal them (Hanna never was one for science).

They all try, and Spencer would laugh at each of them for being so stupidly naïve and hopeful, if she didn't know that even years later, even after everything that A and (_Toby_) and Alison have done to them, she's still stuck on that rocky road, still gazing longingly into that open door and the image that she knows she'll find behind it.

.

She let herself fall one time, she let herself believe – she let Alison come along and mold her into this hopeful and dependent person, and shove her right through that door, where she fell and she got back up and she fell again.

She let all that happen once.

And she'd like to believe that she's not going to let it happen again, that she's stronger than that, but she can't.

Because she's never loved anyone as much as she loves them, and she knows that them hurting her will always hurt more than anything Toby ever does to her, but they'd always be the easiest to forgive because she _needs _them too much to just let go.

.

(holding Malcolm's hand feels like a betrayal; the hoodie doesn't fit her, it's too large and too hot, and she thinks she's going to suffocate in it

But it's _his _voice that she hears

_do me a favor—_

_call me first—_

_if you need anything—_

and it's Mona's promises ringing in her head, somewhere where her heart used to be, and she doesn't think she's ever hated anyone as much as she hates herself for still holding on to that last shred of hope)

**iv. _Mona_**

She doesn't lean on Mona so much as she uses her. She refuses to ever need Mona, to ever need Toby, because they're the enemy – and that hasn't changed – and she tells her herself, promises herself that she's only doing this for the truth, to find it; to offer her friends whatever she can, since all she's been doing lately is hurting them and pushing them away.

Someone told her that in order to succeed in life, you need to have a goal set in mind, and she refuses for that goal to ever be Mona, to ever be spelled in the way that she misses Toby's arms around her, the warmth of his body; refuses to be a pawn in the game that Alison created and Mona helped develop, that Toby plays in this, whatever his part is, in however way they thrust him into it.

_(we happened to you)_

She refuses to need Toby and Mona, but she doesn't realize that before she could do all of this, she had to refuse to ever need Alison.

.

And, not for the first time, she's disappointed in herself and she realizes that people can hurt themselves just as much as they can hurt each other.

She hates herself for ever needing Toby, for reaching out to him in the first place, as if the broken doll that she is needs help and fixing.

But she can't fix herself and she knows that, now.

She knows it even more when the relief of hearing Mona's words – _he's alive, and he's waiting for you, ever the romantic _– greets her; bursts in her chest like a million tiny explosions, shrapnel sliding in between the cracks of her heart, in hopes of bringing it to life again, and she realizes that she'd never stopped hoping, never stopped dreaming.

That makes her weaker than anyone else she's ever known, and it disgusts her.

.

(she believes Mona's words and she believes Toby's words, and all the time that they're together, again – when she finally realizes that Wren's lips could never be enough, because they weren't Toby's, that she's really not strong enough to move on, with anyone else – she feels something flailing in her, something slowly fading away.

That little part of her that believes that hope breeds eternal misery, folding into some nonexistent artery of her body, a cured disease she's lived with for years, because the part of her that's telling her that Toby's all she's ever wanted and needed – the confirmation that he loved her as much as she loved – _loves _– him, as much as he said, was all that she needed to come back– seems to over-ride the rest of her; seems to pull her into that same hopeful naivety that they all live with, and shoves her right in front of the truth and—

_You're just like them, Spence. How could you ever think otherwise?_

But she knows that kissing Toby is just as painful as it is relieving, and she thinks she died that same moment that Toby seemed to revive her, and whatever she is right now, whoever Toby is, whatever they both mean to each other, she knows she'll never be the same again)

**v. _Alison_**

"What did I teach you about people, Spence? You disappoint me."

Spencer locks her gaze onto Ali's unwaveringly, refusing to be put down by the way Ali's smirking, self-assured and confident as always.

"Never trust_ anybody_, because they'll only let you down," Ali says, approaching her slowly.

For a mad second, Spencer thinks she'll reach out and hold her again; play the music and together they'll dance, away from the world and normalcy and what it means to be human, to be _alive_.

And Spencer wishes she would, if only so she could grip onto her waist again – so this time around, she could dig her fingers into her flesh and hurt her, hurt her like she knows that she was hurt when she was alive, minutes before she died

"You also taught me how to trust," Spencer murmurs, once it seems that Ali's only going to be standing in front of her, standing higher and taller than she really is. "It's _your _fault I met them. It's your fault we're friends. _You _approached me, and it's because of you that _we _were ever friends in the first place."

"Trusting _them_ is one thing," Ali says, her voice growing sharper. But even so, her eyes are a soft blue, her smile a colored lie drawn across her lips. But maybe it's not. Maybe, somewhere, in the deep ethers of her soulless self, Alison _did _care about them, and still does, wherever she is.

(_dead_, Spencer thinks, _she's dead_, but she can't be sure)

"Trusting people like Toby and Mona – that's something else entirely different."

Spencer doesn't say anything; she lets the words sink in, lets them settle down in her bones there right along with _you don't exist without me _and _you had to earn it _and _you don't have to ask me again, Mona. _

"A's the enemy," Alison says, and she cups Spencer's cheek in her hand. Her skin feels cold, but it also feels real, substantial. Like she's actually there. Spencer tries not to close her eyes and hope too much. "Mona and Toby are the enemy."

"_You're _the enemy," Spencer says, flinching away from her touch. "You were always the enemy."

Ali's eyes darken.

"I brought you them," she says, quietly. "I brought you Emily and Aria and Hanna – without me, you'd still be nothing. I _made _you into someone."

As much as Spencer would like to tell her that she's wrong, she knows it's true.

Without Alison – and without them, without her friends, who need her, who love her, whom _she _needs and loves even more than they'll ever know – she'd be nothing. The same scared little girl, hiding in the dark theater behind the concerned couple who'd asked where her parents were, secretly wishing that someone would realize that she was gone and come and find her.

"Are you really ready to trust him again?" Alison asks. "After everything that he's done – can you forgive him for it?"

Spencer tries to control her voice, but it still shakes, still catches in her throat.

"I forgave _you_, didn't I?"

"I'm dead. He's not." Ali breathes out, pushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She smiles, too; bright and sunny-like. "I'll just tell you this: don't forget where you came from, Spencer. And don't forget where _he _came from."

"I won't," Spencer whispers, then looks away.

Alison studies her for a while, before she nods.

"I know you won't. You're too smart for that. You always were."

_But maybe I'm not anymore._

She can see it all in Ali's eyes – she's thinking the same thing.

.

She remembers tuna salad sandwiches and princesses and singing, and at night, when she can manage an hour or two of sleep, when her mind seems to give up on racing, on thinking about Toby and her friends and what happened the night they nearly burned to death, she dreams that she's that princess and all of them – Wren, Melissa, her friends, Mona, Toby – are the ones singing around her, obeying her every command, crumbling under the clench of her fist, fading away to dust when she's not around; coming back to life every time she comes back to them.

That she's their queen and they were dumb to ever think otherwise.

And somewhere behind her, she can hear Alison's laugh and her congratulating, proud-filled words, the only ones she's ever recognized as something as close to an _I love you _as her family can muster; as close to any form of emotion that Alison's ever felt towards her.

_Good job, Spence. It seemed I taught you well after all._

She'd never understood what it meant to hate someone as much as you loved them before she met Alison (and Toby).

.

(Spencer's never needed anyone and she's never wanted to need anyone.

But then she met Alison, and Hanna and Emily and Aria, and somewhere along the way, she met Toby too;

And she recognizes that they all have the ability to ruin her as easily as they can hold her up, and she recognizes that it all started with Alison and it all should stop with her—

but she needs them – all of them – more than they'll ever need her, more than she ever needed – _needs _– Alison, and there's nothing she can do to change that)


End file.
